“Where do people go for their prescriptions?”
“Most use the clinic. It costs a lot more, and they don’t deliver like we did, but what other choice do people have? No pharmacist, no pharmacy—it’s that simple.”
“Maybe if the mall had gone through—”
“I don’t have the money to pay rent in a mall,” Spiess said. “More likely they would have moved in a CVS or Walgreens, and that would have been the end of that. This store has been here almost as long as the town, and now…” She shook her head some more. “The way things are going, the town might not be here much longer, either.”
I remembered what Miller had told me. “It’s the county seat,” I said.
“What makes you think the county will survive? Twenty years ago we had nearly five thousand residents. Now it’s down to barely three. Besides, we’re the county seat in name only. The school is here, and so are the library, public works, the assessor’s office, and natural resources. On the other hand, human services, the sheriff’s department, the courts, county administration, all that’s up in Mercer. People like old man Miller keep talking about consolidation. They think that everything is going to move here, that we’ll be the town left standing when the smoke clears. C’mon. We’re nearly a quarter million dollars in debt. No one’s going to be consolidating with us. We’re the ones that’re going to be consolidating. We’ll be consolidating with Mercer.”
“The state could step in.”
“Why would it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It would be damn nice if you could find all that money, Mr. McKenzie. It won’t do me any good, but the town…”
“Did you have any dealings with Rush?” I said.
“Very few. Once he learned about my situation, that I had no money for him, he stayed away.”
“What about as a member of the city council?”
“I just sat there and listened and nodded like everyone else.”
“You knew the password for—”
“I heard you were looking into that. McKenzie, everyone knew the password, and if they didn’t they could have figured it out easy enough. I mean, we used the same password for all of our accounts, for everything. You want to mess with our Web site the way those high school kids did last October? Just type in LIBBIESD1884. Seems to me that we could have avoided a lot of problems if only we had shown a little imagination. Listen, it’s Sunday. Sunday is my day for staring at my books and feeling sorry for myself. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“As a matter of fact, I could use some hydrogen peroxide, an eyedropper, and a thermometer.”
The owner of the only hardware store within fifty miles said he was selling out.
“Business has been falling off for years,” he said. “Now this. I never ran for city council, you know. I was appointed when Manny DeVine quit. He was the pharmacist over at Spiess Drugs, and one day he decided to hell with it and left town. Old man Miller thought I’d make a reliable rubber stamp, so he appointed me—our charter let him do it. Councilman George Humphrey, I kind of liked the sound of that. Now—now they’re going to blame me for everything that’s happened, for losing the money. Me and Bizek. I don’t need that shit.”
“Why blame you?”
“I was a true believer. I thought it was a great idea, the mall, and I talked it up, talked it up even when guys like Chuck Munoz and Ronny Radosevich said it would ruin business in downtown, when Jon Kampa said we should be more careful. Now all that money’s gone. You know what? I’m not even going to the next meeting. Screw it.”
Humphrey rang up my purchases—an acetone-based paint solvent, a roll of electrical tape, rubber gloves, and a pair of protective goggles—and put them into a brown bag printed with the name of his store.
“Anything else?” he said.
“Did you have any dealings with Rush outside of the city council?” I asked.
“A lot of dealings. I told you, I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed every word that bastard said, even put up fifty thousand of my own for a spot in the mall. That hurt, let me tell you. That’s it, though. I’m done. Kaput. Fini. I’m cutting my losses. I’m selling the store to the first chump who comes along with money in his jeans. Hell, I might not even wait for a chump. I might just shutter the doors and walk away.”
“That’ll leave your friends and neighbors in a tough spot, won’t it, since you have the only hardware store around?”
“McKenzie, you’re not listening. I don’t give a shit.”
There were two cars and a pickup parked in the lot of Schooley’s Auto Repair. The front ends of all three were smashed in.
“What happened?” I asked.